ALMA - The Oneida County Sheriff's Office continues to investigate and search for the McNaughton Correctional Center inmate that walked away from his work release job Tuesday.

Todd Brecht shot and killed Buffalo County District Attorney Roger Hartman nearly 27 years ago. He was convicted of the crime in 1986. He's been serving time in jail ever since.

But on Tuesday Brecht walked off his work release job at the St. Germain Golf Club.

Friends of the victim like Gary Schlosstein, who is a retired judge that worked with Hartman, don't understand why Brecht would bolt after so many years spent in prison.

"It amazes me why a person with that many years already in would walk away from a work site in Northern Wisconsin when he's actually within at least hope of actual release time," Schlosstein said. "Why he would go and do something that seems so illogical, but of course the murder itself was illogical."

Hartman's friends and colleagues remembered him well. Larry Balk was a friend of Hartman's before his death. He worry what Brecht will do on the run.

"It's a concern you don't want him doing it to anybody else," Balk said.

But Schlosstein has faith in police finding him.

"It's only a question of time before he gets picked up again," Schlosstein said.

EAGLE RIVER - Ken Schels, the owner of KMS, a custom wood and metal shop in Eagle River, makes pieces to honor his family's past as well as nature itself. His family was one of the pioneer families in Eagle River. That's how he came to appreciate all that the forest has to give.

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